Frodo of “the Lord of the Rings” is a major development of a concept of a hero. If we start with a hero story (such as “the Song of Roland” is, for instance, or cloak-and-sword novels or comic books) it would be centered around past concepts of virtuosity and good such as: cardinal virtues, honor, hierarchy, innate excellence or similar.
To Tolkien this is an insufficient partial picture: not because cardinal virtue and honor is all nonsense (as more common liberal-nihilistic fantasy portrays it). No, Tolkien wants to go deeper than that: to ascend, not to descend.
Therefore, for Frodo every layer of human win-conditions (that still would bother Roland or Batman) is peeled off, one layer at a time, until nothing remains except the bare fact that the Ring is gone and Frodo is still alive.
The story is engineered so that each renunciation costs more than the previous one, and the final cost is the right to claim moral credit for the victory.
That is why the last beat feels unsatisfying to the heroic imagination—and exactly that is the point.
The ascending price-list of renunciations
- Lose the Shire – home, compatriots, convenient life.
- Get stabbed at the Weathertop – is badly hurt, barely makes it out alive.
- Lose Gandalf – transcendent guidance.
- Betrayed by Boromir – trust in human might or protection
- Split-off from the Fellowship – communal support
- Drop the pots and gear – basic comforts.
- Refuse to kill Gollum – the last tactical safeguard, to kill a future traitor or murderer.
- Get more hurt and nearly dead – Shelob poison, orcs, starvation.
- Lose rational mind – Getting nearly crazy from the Ring influence. “I can’t remember the taste of food”
- Lose the final act of virtue – he fails, claiming the Ring; the victory is given by the very creature he spared.
Each step is a higher rung on the ladder of what a hero is allowed to keep.
When the ladder ends, Frodo is suspended in air, holding nothing, even his moral identity as “the one who resisted” taken from him.
Why the last loss is the decisive one
If Frodo had cast the Ring in, the story would still be a hero-type fairy-tale: with enough grit, even the smallest person can win.
Instead, Tolkien states the victory that you cannot perform for yourself.
The Ring is destroyed by Gollum’s bite and by prior pity (Frodo’s earlier mercy) working together outside Frodo’s conscious will.
End accomplished by weakness, by monster he once pitied and by hope that it all has purpose, even if we don’t see it.
The inner criteria of “success” that survive the stripping
- Charity – the one virtue he did keep to the extreme even when it looked folly and suicide (by pitying and sparing Gollum).
- Keep going with the plan – he walked all the way to the Cracks of Doom, even after he knew he could not walk back.
- Consent to failure – he declares the failure out loud, he does not choose to do what he came to do, thus handing the narrative back to the larger providence he no longer controls.
Does “Good win over Evil”? Sort of, but at a cost.
The good is only pure when chosen for sake of itself, not for sake of other gratification. That is why moral plane only becomes readable after the tactical plane collapses,
On the tactical plane the plan was hopeless: two hobbits carrying a weapon that corrupts the carrier right into the Dark Lord’s jaws.
On the moral plane despair and hopelesness turns the metaphysical table: no hope means no own vision of victory. Good done for sake of good
to reveal an eucatastrophic turn that overrides the logic of might-makes-right.
The epilogue resonates same thing: Frodo is not a king or a Thain of Shire. He still suffers the consequences of his wounds. Finally, he is given permission
to depart to Valinor. The victory is won, but ultimately not his to enjoy.
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